Intrigues v(cc-2

by Mercedes Lackey

  Mags nodded. “I’m follerin’ ye so far.”

  “I’m hoping with all your shields, you might be able to get stuff leaked over that I can use to try and understand what’s going on in his head.” Bear sighed. “I’ve got him calmer now, at least. And he’s put on a little weight. So we’re more or less back to the point where he was during the blizzard.”

  “I’ll give ’er a go,” Mags said. “But I ain’t promisin’ nothin’.” He felt a little uneasy saying even that much, but this was Bear, and he would do whatever he could to help out his friend.

  He just wished he could have gotten hold of Nikolas to ask him about keeping Bear here. He was pretty certain that if Nikolas made the request, things would be sorted in a hurry.

  He followed Bear back to Healers’ Collegium, and into yet another part of the building he’d never been before. They entered by a different door than before, one tucked out of sight. Once inside, Bear took him through a pair of double doors at what must have been the other end of the big sickroom. This was a short section with a corridor that looked a lot like the one in the part of Heralds’ Collegium that held the student rooms. Except the corridor was much narrower. He couldn’t help but notice the very heavy doors to each room, the thick walls (as evidenced by the narrowness of the corridor), and the odd atmosphere of the place. It felt... as if everything was slightly wrong, somehow, as if what he was seeing was not what anyone else saw. That made no sense, on the face of it, but if the people kept here were all mad, well, maybe that was the literal truth; what they saw was nothing like what he was seeing.

  Sounds were muffled, and the air felt—not stale, exactly, but as if it never moved.

  “How many people ye got i’ here?” he asked in a whisper. It felt as if he should whisper, as if there were things here he didn’t want to wake up.

  “Around ten. Most of them aren’t as bad as Lunatic. Most of them we can help,” said Bear with a sigh. “Not all of them. Got a woman who killed her babies, thinking they were demon-possessed. Now she knows they weren’t, so now she keeps trying to kill herself. I don’t know what they’re going do about her. Husband wants her sent home so that she can kill herself. Says it’s only fair, that she’d hang for murder now that she knows what she did, so we might as well let her hang herself. The Healers don’t want that to happen, so they keep her here. She just keeps getting worse. Mindhealers can’t do anything with her now.”

  Mags winced. “Nothin’ good gonna come of that, no matter what. Keep ’er, turn ’er loose, whatever. Even if she stops tryin’ t’ kill herself, law might hang ’er.”

  “I know. Makes me glad I’m not a Mindhealer. Here we are.” They stopped in front of one of the doors, and Bear took out a key to unlock it. “Not sure what you want to do, but based on how the Mindhealers reacted, I’d be careful about dropping shields.”

  :I can get them back up for you faster than you can for yourself,: said Dallen.

  “Dallen reckons he kin help,” Mags reported.

  “Good, that’s something the Mindhealers didn’t have.” Bear swung the door open and they went inside.

  The room was absolutely stark and bare, although Mags got the feeling that this was because of the occupant rather than some omission on the Healers’ part. The only furnishings were a bed, a table, and two chairs. All were made of metal and bolted to the floor; the table and chairs were under the window, the bed pushed up against the wall. The walls were utterly smooth and featureless—if nails had been used to put them up, there was no sign of them, no way to pry one out of the wall and use it as a weapon or to harm yourself. Nevertheless, walls, floor, and ceiling were all a soft, soothing rose-ocher color, and someone had carefully painted wonderful designs on them in darker rose and cream. The single window in the wall had a metal grate with small holes in it bolted over it, protecting the thick glass panes from the occupant. It looked out over a bit of garden.

  The foreigner was on the bed, at the head of it, curled up in the corner against the wall. His back was wedged into the corner, his arms were wrapped around his legs, and his chin was propped on his knees. He regarded them with unfocused and uninterested eyes.

  “How are you doing today?” Bear asked. The man blinked once or twice, and mumbled something Mags couldn’t make out. It didn’t sound Valdemaran.

  “You really need to try and speak a language I can understand,” Bear said, gently. “I can’t help you if I can’t understand you.”

  The man muttered something else.

  Mags wasn’t getting anything at all from him through full shields, so, cautiously, he dropped the first one.

  Very faintly, he began to sense something. Now, the good thing about Mindspeech was that it was always in a language you understood—which only made sense, really, since it was thought to thought, and shouldn’t need a translator. And right away, Mags understood why the Mindhealers hadn’t wanted anything to do with this man, if it was true that they had to drop all their shields in order to treat him.

  First, there was the dim sense of incredible fear. Then came the man’s thoughts, which were, strangely enough, completely organized and circular. It was almost prayer-like, as if the repeating loop kept whatever the man was afraid of away.

  The problem was, this was babble. Babble with an undertone of stark terror. Mags was getting that panicked fear even through very good shields, and Mindhealers tended to be Empaths, people who picked up emotions rather than thoughts. It would have been torture for them to encounter that much sustained terror, and then to have that babble running around in your head—assuming they were also Mindspeakers—well, he would have thrown up his hands and walked off too.

  “. . . and all the things that are not there, they flock and fly and stare and stare, and all their eyes are big and bright and burn away the dark of night, and there is nowhere left to hide, they’re everywhere, they get inside, and even though they are not there, they’re watching watching everywhere, and more and more come every day, oh gods I wish they’d go away, and all the things that are not there, they flock and fly and stare and stare . . .”

  Mags got the thoughts just like that, as a kind of poem. Which... maybe made sense, since almost all the books the foreigners had left behind them had been of poetry.

  “He’s babblin’ about things that ain’t there, how they stare at ’im and won’t go ’way, how they’ve even got inside ’im,” Mags reported with confidence. “Tha’s basically it. Same thing, over an’ over. I think he thinks th’ words keep th’ eyes outa his head. ’E’s still seein’ things w’ eyes starin’ at ’im, an’ more of ’em all the time. ’E’s jest scared ’bout to death.”

  “That’s more than anyone else got from him,” Bear said thoughtfully. “And—yes, unless I drug him to sleep, he’s always frightened, his heart is always racing. So he’s still on about the eyes. I don’t think there’s any doubt Lena was right. I am going to have to dig deeper in the Archives.”

  “Fer what?”

  “Something that will shut off—well, whatever it is that he has that is attracting these things,” Bear said.

  Mags blinked at him. “Ye mean, ye think he ain’t seein’ things that ain’t there, ’e’s seein’ things that are?”

  “Best explanation I can come up with,” Bear replied. “I’ve tried just about everything else that would shut down a hallucination. So what’s left? They aren’t hallucinations.”

  “Huh,” said Mags.

  They went out, leaving the poor man to his horde of invisible tormentors.

  Chapter12

  THE moment Mags woke up, he knew by the sinking feeling in his chest that there was trouble, and it was aimed at him. Again. And once he knew that, he could feel it all over again, that pressure of unfriendly, accusatory regard out there.

  :Wha’ happened whiles I was asleep?: he asked Dallen immediately. He squeezed his eyes closed, forcing down the nausea that this called up in him. Dear gods, he hated, hated this. In a way it was worse than anything he’d
endured at the mine. There, at least, no one had actually hated him.

  :The damned Foreseers had more of their visions,: Dallen replied with disgust. :Still just as vague, except that one of them said he saw you, specifically, with your hands covered in blood, and nothing but you. And it was someone who’d come to see the Kirball game and knows what you look like, so we can’t wonder if it is a case of mistaken identity. So it’s all to do all over again.:

  Mags tightened his jaw. :Dammit.: He felt his spirits sinking lower, felt that certainty that it just wasn’t even worth getting out of bed anymore. :Knew it couldn’ last.:

  Maybe what he ought to do is just give in to the depression and curl up in bed and never get out again.

  :That’s all right, we’ll weather this. Just do as you did before. Keep quiet and stick with the team. They all know you, better than anyone but me. You can do this, Mags, don’t let these fools make you give up. As long as your team is around you, no one will do or probably even say anything.: If Dallen was picking up on his despair, the Companion wasn’t actually addressing it directly.

  :But they’ll think it,: Mags replied, the nausea, the ache, all coming back. :An’ they’ll talk about it behind m’ back.:

  He got the sense that Dallen would like to help, but had no idea how to. It was the same old thing all over again, with the difference that this time he’d been “seen” with blood on his hands. Blood on his hands? Was it a metaphor? If it was, then in a sense every Herald had or would have blood on his hands. They were often responsible for life and death decisions. Their judgments condemned people. What they uncovered condemned people. Messages they carried condemned people.

  And of course, they fought in battles alongside the Guard. That, after all, was what Kirball was about, preparation for war. So all Heralds would have blood on their hands, eventually.

  For that matter, he’d already been responsible for people dying. There were the murdered mine kids he hadn’t been able to prove were even dead. And most of all there was that crazy killer that had kidnapped Bear. That man was dead literally at his hands. Who was to say that this so-called vision wasn’t about the past rather than about the future?

  It was so unfair.

  For a long, long time he contemplated the idea of just not bothering anymore, of turning his face to the wall and telling the whole world to hang.

  But... Dallen wouldn’t let him. And anyway, if he just sank into depression and gave up, what would that do to Dallen? That would pile being unfair to the one creature that had always been good to him on top of the general unfairness of the universe.

  He dragged himself out of bed reluctantly, and prepared to face the ordeal of breakfast.

  It was not quite the ordeal it had been the first time all those wretched Foreseers had spread their stories, since the Trainees of his team had already gotten wind of what was up, and had filled in the others as they waited for Mags. But once again, he was getting the suspicious looks, and once again, certain folk who were dubious of anything that was not Valdemaran were allowing their prejudices free range.

  How stupid was that? Why should where your parents came from have anything to do with whether you were a good or a bad person? Especially when you couldn’t even remember them?

  Unfairness piled on top of unfairness.

  He managed to get through the day, unconsciously taking that hunched-over, defensive, hunted posture the whole time. He didn’t even realize what he was doing until he straightened up for Kirball practice and felt his muscles unkink. But that didn’t stop his mind from sending his body right into that same posture again once practice was over.

  Over the next two days, things remained the same, with the same waking-to-sleeping tension. The only good thing was that the weather was warming up enough that when he wasn’t in class or at practice, he could study out of doors. So that was where he took his books and stayed until there wasn’t enough light to read by, hidden in some little cluster of bushes in Companion’s Field. That kept him out of his room in the stable, where he would sense the thoughts of everyone who came near the stable.

  It was very peaceful out there. Any sounds from the Palace and Collegia were muffled, any spilled-over thoughts too distant to bother him.

  Actually, it was more than peaceful—even though it was a bit lonely. Still, he’d always been lonely, and only during the past half-year had he been anything but lonely. You just didn’t make friends at the mine. Even the kiddies he’d sporadically helped hadn’t been friends.

  As he packed up his books to go back to his room and try to sleep, he thought about that. This time last year, he was at the mine. He remembered very well how he had welcomed the warmth after the killing cold, and welcomed other things too—because spring meant all sorts of things were edible that were not, later. And if you could get away into some of the forest around the mine and you knew what to look for, you could find them.

  Strange how last spring he had been as close as he ever got at the mine to being happy. But he’d had a belly full of greens almost every night, and back at the mine, a full belly meant you were happy. Lion’s-tooth was sweet when it first came up, not bitter, and it was one of the heartiest weeds there was, so there was a lot of it. Cattail root was delicious, but impossible to harvest in the winter unless you wanted your feet frozen solid, and you had to be sure you were getting it, and not water iris, which was poisonous. There were tiny wild onions too, mushrooms (though you had to be careful of those as well), sorrel, the tips of birch twigs, brooklime, clover, cow-pea, mustard, violets, pigweed, sow-thistle, jewel-weed, shepherd’s purse, pokeberry, plaintain, knotweed, and very young nettles. There were other things you could eat if they were cooked, but how could any of the mine-slaves get a fire, much less a pot? So they had to confine themselves to what could be eaten raw.

  With so many years of mine workers foraging nearby, there were no berries within a reasonable distance of the mine, and the most obviously edible things were also long ago grubbed up and eaten. But if you knew what you were looking for and you were prepared to graze like a goose, spring was the one season when you could actually go to sleep with a full belly if you could slip away for a while.

  Now, this spring, he could sleep with a full belly every night—if only his belly wasn’t so knotted up with tension that it was hard to eat anything at all. Such irony.

  As one day turned into another, he found the Field to be his new sanctuary, safer even than his room or the Heraldic Archives.

  As he would sit studying, sometimes his attention would be taken by one of the things he would immediately have pounced on and devoured this time last year, and he was reminded that no matter how uncomfortable things were, they were so much better than they could have been. He might not have survived this past winter. Even if he had, right now he would have been half starved, always tired, always afraid.

  But it was hard, very hard, to try to keep his spirits up. The constant weight of unfriendly regard on him wore his spirit down.

  It was harder still to have to come to meals and the occasional study session with Bear, and see poor Lena. Lena had gone from bright and happy—even if her happiness had a false cause, it was real happiness—to crushed and bewildered.

  That first little “informal concert” had been the last that Mags had been invited to. And, he supposed, the last that Lena had been invited to participate in. With the dark stories in the wind again, Bard Marchand had pulled back from Mags abruptly, not even acknowledging that he knew the Trainee if they happened to cross paths. And that meant Lena was no longer of any use to him. She didn’t say anything, but Mags could tell, by the way she drooped and looked forlorn, that her father had once again abandoned her as well as Mags.

  He actually felt worse for her than he did for himself.

  He wouldn’t have said anything to Lena about it, though, but Bear brought it up. Actually, Bear brought it up several times and finally, one night, wouldn’t let go, asking her “What’s wrong?” until she finally
answered.

  “I never see Father anymore,” she said unhappily. “I don’t know why, or what I did to offend him but I never see him at all now, and he doesn’t reply to my notes.”

  And again, Mags wouldn’t have said anything, but Bear had evidently had enough of this. He got that stubborn look on his face, pushed his lenses up on his nose with one finger, and leaned over the table.

  “He won’t see you because Mags is in people’s bad books again, and therefore, Mags isn’t on the list of people he looks good knowing,” Bear said, bluntly. “All he ever wanted was to meet up with Mags and make it look as if Mags was a friend of his. You were nothing more than his way to get to Mags easily. He just doesn’t care about you, Lena; all he ever cared was that everyone would know that he knew the Kirball star and the hero of the hour, because he collects people like that just to get an advantage.”

  Lena turned shocked eyes on him. “How—why would you say such a thing?” she cried, looking as if she was about to cry. “Father never—Father wouldn’t—he’s a famous Bard, why would he do something like that?”

  Mags sighed. He couldn’t leave Bear to take this one alone. “He’s sayin’ it ’cause it’s true,” he said. “Nobody wanted t’ tell ye, but thet’s what he’s like.”

  Lena looked from him, to Bear, and back again, stricken dumb.

  “Lena, what has he ever done for you, for your family, besides remind them once a year how lucky they are that he married into your house?” Bear urged. “Where does his money come from? Your family, and whatever gifts he gets from his patrons. Does he ever send any of that back? No. Who got you your first music lessons? Him? No. Your ma. Who saw to it that a Bard heard you play and sing so you could get sent here, him? You’d think that would be natural, wouldn’t you, once he found out you were a musician? But no. It wasn’t him, it was your grandpa, you told us that yourself. Had he ever heard you sing and play before you got here? No.”